Larry Page: A Pure Outlier
What is an outlier? As Malcolm Gladwell explains it in the book Outliers, an outlier is “something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body”. It is also a “statistical observation that is marked differently in value from others of the sample”. Larry Larry Page is the co-founder and CEO of Google. He has earned a variety of awards and is considered one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35! Page, in my opinion, is an excellent example of an outlier.
Larry Page was born on March 26, 1973, in East Lansing, Michigan. Page attended Okemos Montessori School and graduated at East Lansing High School. After graduating, Page attended the University of Michigan. There, he earned a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering. Page also attended Stanford with honors and earned a Master of Science in computer science. At Stanford, he met Sergey Brin. Together, they launched Google. Besides being the co-founder, he is also the CEO of Google. According to Danny Sullivan, the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, “Google remains the most used search engine in the world, far outdistancing competitors.” Page is married to Lucinda Southworth and has two children.
Larry Page has earned many awards. He was named a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow in 2002. Also, he and Sergey Brin were named “Persons of the Week” by ABC World News Tonight in 2004 and were both named to the MIT Technology Review
TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35! In 2014, he was ranked 19th on the Forbes list of billionaires with an estimated wealth of $32.3 billion. As you can see, Page has clearly been tremendously successful.
In the book, Outliers, Gladwell lists the qualities of an outlier. One quality is opportunity. He was born into a family that supported him in his interests. His father, Carl Page, was a computer science professor at Michigan State University and was considered a “pioneer in computer science can artificial intelligence.” In Page’s house, there were many computer devices, leading to the second quality of an outlier, practice. Page learned to take the devices apart, with the help from his brother, when he was only 6 years old! Page says, “from a very early age, I also realized I wanted to invent things. So I became really interested in technology and business. Probably from when I was 12, I knew I was going to start a company eventually.” After raising $1 million from family, friends and other investors, Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched their company, Google in 1988. This is another quality of an outlier, help.
In conclusion, Page is an excellent example of an outlier. He took advantage of his opportunities, he had help from his family and friends, he reached 100,000 hours of practice in computer related work, and enjoyed phenomenal successful. He continues to be a leader and innovator in the technology world today, and recently donated 177 million dollars to charity!
Bibliography
2.Identities, WorldCat. "Larry Page." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 May 2014. Web. 20 May 2014.
3.Sullivan, Danny. "Google Still World's Most Popular Search Engine By Far, But Share Of Unique
Searchers Dips Slightly." Search Engine Land. Enterprise, 11 Feb. 2013. Web. 20 May 2014.
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